There are a variety of theories on what exactly "reality" is.My observations are in line with what I have read in the Christian scripture. The other versions don't match as well.

God gets the credit for revealing this to me, it is not of my doing.

I think I'll start here, as this illustrates the point I want to make very well.

You say that your observations are in line with what you have read in Christian scripture. I'll bet that you made those observations only after reading those scriptures - meaning that you are illustrating the pitfall of confirmation bias. You're making observations solely to prove that what you already believe is true, not to discover what is actually true.

I agree that the force need not be intelligent.But as I have rejected the mindless force theoryon scientific principals as I've never seen stupidity produce any workable systems.

Mindlessness is not the same as stupidity. Stupidity is the lack of reason where reason should exist. We do not call a rock stupid because rocks do not possess the ability to reason or think.

Quote from: SkyWriting

Engineers work long hours just to design a bridgethat won't collapse. Yet an Atom seem to be fairly stable in most cases. The odds of Atomscoming into being without intelligent designare small.

I sincerely doubt that. First off, the situations of a bridge vs an atom are not analogous. I can point to examples of natural bridges (logs that get wedged in place across rivers, or rock bridges that are left in place due to erosion) which completely negate the point you're attempting to make - that such things have to be "intelligently designed" in order to work. Second, I doubt you could actually formulate these 'odds' in such a way that would be even slightly convincing, since you can only calculate odds accurately when you have sufficient knowledge of the conditions.

That would be the bias toward intelligent design.I know people with low processing power.They don't design things well. For example, my coworker often burns his hand on things that are hot.The same things time after time.

Your coworker being stupid has nothing to do with the formation of atoms, or any other natural process for that matter.

The problem with your chain of reasoning (illustrated by these three posts) is that it's based on a fatally-flawed premise to begin with. You're basically comparing things made by smart people (which work well) and things made by stupid people (which don't), and then comparing that to natural things like atoms. Because there are no atoms which don't work well, you then come to the conclusion that atoms must have been made by something intelligent.

That isn't even like comparing apples and oranges - it's like comparing vacuum to the Earth's core. The fatal flaw of your premise is that you presume atoms were all made to begin with - implying a maker. This is not a reasonable presumption because you have never actually seen an atom being made by this "intelligent designer" to begin with. You're just assuming that it had to have been constructed, without anything to back it up besides circular reasoning.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

So you have no idea, and attacking conversations going on in your mind helps to avoid the reality.

Having "an idea" is exactly your problem, you are desperate. You feel that you MUST have the answer right now otherwise you're uncomfortable. So you take your first "idea" (religious assumption) and just go with it.

It was the conclusion after decades of investigation. I have read that some go through a period of trial though.

There are a variety of theories on what exactly "reality" is.My observations are in line with what I have read in the Christian scripture. The other versions don't match as well. God gets the credit for revealing this to me, it is not of my doing.

I think I'll start here, as this illustrates the point I want to make very well.

You say that your observations are in line with what you have read in Christian scripture. I'll bet that you made those observations only after reading those scriptures.

No, I was well out of college at the time. There is nothing about historical science theories that separate it from the religion of Secular Humanism.

The you can agree with me that looking for life is futile, because finding another planet with life on it....well, the human race just doesn't have the time to go looking for slime molds in space.

You really know nothing about modern cosmology, do you?

It is believed that the closest planets similar to earth might be 13 light years away.So, choose your "odds of life developing" and consider the first point is 13 LY from earth.If one does travel at light speed, earth will dust before they return. "Relativity" speaking.

So you were not aware that SPAG is a reply to a poster with poor grammar and spelling? Neither was I, so I looked it up.

I don't care that it's also used to refer to spelling and grammar problems. In this case, median meant it as Self-Projection As God. How do I know this? Because that particular meaning was coined here at WWGHA. Check the link I provided.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

It is believed that the closest planets similar to earth might be 13 light years away.So, choose your "odds of life developing" and consider the first point is 13 LY from earth.If one does travel at light speed, earth will dust before they return. "Relativity" speaking.

Hey, Sky, you just have to get over this "earth to dust" hangup of yours. The timeline for such things is so beyond human scales that there is no need to worry about it. None whatsoever. You keep talking like it is in our immediate future. We've got lots of crap to deal with in the near-term, but the planet turning to dust is not one of them.

Oh yea, and Sky, I know you hate the crap out of Secular Humanists. Which makes your insistence in calling that philosophical stance a religion all the more perplexing. I would think you would want to distance your clearly religious point of view from a clearly non-religious stance, rather than trying to meld the two under one label.

The world will be dust before Secular Humanism is a religion. See, when I use your language, it makes sense to you, right?

It is believed that the closest planets similar to earth might be 13 light years away.So, choose your "odds of life developing" and consider the first point is 13 LY from earth.If one does travel at light speed, earth will dust before they return. "Relativity" speaking.

That's not how relativistic travel would work.

A person in a spaceship moving at relativistic speeds (let's say .99c for the sake of argument) will have time move much slower for them. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, a round trip to a destination 13 LY distant would take them just over 26 years. As far as the passenger is concerned, it would (probably) take them a few days.

So no, Earth would not be dust by the time they returned. They'd have been gone for just a bit over a quarter-century. Even if they spent a while there, it would still probably be less than three decades. That's not even a particularly long time, relatively speaking.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

It is believed that the closest planets similar to earth might be 13 light years away.So, choose your "odds of life developing" and consider the first point is 13 LY from earth.If one does travel at light speed, earth will dust before they return. "Relativity" speaking.

And this is relevant...how? All I see, thus far, is one big argument from ignorance fallacy coming. So instead of admitting that you simply don't know the answers, you feel OK to just leap to the one particular religion you grew up around?

If your answer is that you think our universe 'coming into being' is "impossible" without a 'divine mind' deity thing then you'll need to present evidence for that claim (a supernatural deity etc) and not just arguments from ignorance. "I just can't imagine it any other way" is an epic fail b/c it doesn't explain anything or lead anywhere. It is a non-explanation - trying to explain a mystery by another mystery.

When you attempt to use arguments like these it really calls into question the "investigation" which you claim to have done.

Oh yea, and Sky, I know you hate the crap out of Secular Humanists. Which makes your insistence in calling that philosophical stance a religion all the more perplexing.

Já, I'm a secular Humanist -- Paid-up dues and everything. Haven't heard a single prayer at the meetings, but we do get some great guest speakers -- Richard Carrier, PZ Myers, local scientists and politicians and sociologists.

No tax exemptions, though. Unlike churches, we pay our fair share.

And I really can't see Myself ringing someone's doorbell at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning and screeching "Don't believe or buuuurn!"

Oh yea, and Sky, I know you hate the crap out of Secular Humanists. Which makes your insistence in calling that philosophical stance a religion all the more perplexing.

Já, I'm a secular Humanist -- Paid-up dues and everything. Haven't heard a single prayer at the meetings, but we do get some great guest speakers -- Richard Carrier, PZ Myers, local scientists and politicians and sociologists.No tax exemptions, though. Unlike churches, we pay our fair share.And I really can't see Myself ringing someone's doorbell at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning and screeching "Don't believe or buuuurn!"

Every group of adherents uses different means to spread the good word.

It is believed that the closest planets similar to earth might be 13 light years away.So, choose your "odds of life developing" and consider the first point is 13 LY from earth.If one does travel at light speed, earth will dust before they return. "Relativity" speaking.

And this is relevant...how? All I see, thus far, is one big argument from ignorance fallacy coming. So instead of admitting that you simply don't know the answers, you feel OK to just leap to the one particular religion you grew up around? <snip>

I always stop reading the moment people start making assumptions about my background. None of my family attended church. Did we say prayers at Christmas dinner when family came? Yes.

It is believed that the closest planets similar to earth might be 13 light years away.So, choose your "odds of life developing" and consider the first point is 13 LY from earth.If one does travel at light speed, earth will dust before they return. "Relativity" speaking.

That's not how relativistic travel would work.

A person in a spaceship moving at relativistic speeds (let's say .99c for the sake of argument) will have time move much slower for them. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, a round trip to a destination 13 LY distant would take them just over 26 years. As far as the passenger is concerned, it would (probably) take them a few days.

So no, Earth would not be dust by the time they returned. They'd have been gone for just a bit over a quarter-century. Even if they spent a while there, it would still probably be less than three decades. That's not even a particularly long time, relatively speaking.

It is believed that the closest planets similar to earth might be 13 light years away.So, choose your "odds of life developing" and consider the first point is 13 LY from earth.If one does travel at light speed, earth will dust before they return. "Relativity" speaking.

Hey, Sky, you just have to get over this "earth to dust" hangup of yours. The timeline for such things is so beyond human scales that there is no need to worry about it. None whatsoever. You keep talking like it is in our immediate future. We've got lots of crap to deal with in the near-term, but the planet turning to dust is not one of them.

Find some less irksome personal flaw to amplify.

No, I talk about it as science does, as the predicted future. As a result, it points to a Creation event where all matter came into being. And science has added additional news that it was a one time event, not to be repeated.

I was wrong on my numbers. We should think in real terms. You’d need about 10,000 shuttle main engines in sequence just to build up a decent speed (say, 1/100th light speed).

I don't consider it at all coincidental that as soon as you realized just how badly wrong you were about how long it would take to get to another star system at near-lightspeed, you decided to focus instead on what is currently possible. The problem is, you're so narrow-minded that you think you know something and have to have the fact that you're wrong shoved in your face pretty hard to accept it. Except then you just fixate on something else that supports what you already believe. And you act like that false certainty means something and cop a 'superior' attitude to everyone else.

Yes, it's true that with existing space flight technology, other stars are out of our reach. But so what? Since you apparently haven't realized it, technology improves over time. We went from a computer that filled an entire room, ran at 100 kHz[1], and could only run one operation at a time, to computers that you can carry inside a briefcase, run at speeds in excess of 2 GHz[2], and can run dozens of programs at the same time, in less than 70 years.

More to the point, we went from basic rocket propulsion technology to a spacecraft that could take people to the moon and return in about two decades. After that, we basically let it sit and stopped seriously pushing space flight technology, aside from incremental improvements, so for all practical purposes, we're using stuff that's only slightly better than we were using during the heyday of the space program. If we started seriously pushing it again, I think we'd start seeing significant improvements in the technology again.

That page you linked actually acknowledges this very issue not long after that quote you made, probably without reading most of the page.

"But all of those propulsion issues are really trivial. Here is the real problem with traveling to Alpha Centauri. Suppose we chose a method of travel, and set out for a trip among the stars. Suppose that, generations from now, our descendants arrived at a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. They might be greeted by brass bands and crowds of earthlings – who left later, but traveled via a more efficient process – and so made the trip in a shorter time."

I'll grant that he should have told you what the acronym meant instead of leaving you to guess. That's why I simply told you what it meant. You might think about that before you make any more snippy comments.

Every group of adherents uses different means to spread the good word.

So, SW, should '57 Chevy Restoration Associations get tax exemptions? What about the knitting group at the local seniors' residence? Star Trek fan clubs? Pilates studios?

If you classify humanism as a religion but exclude any of the above, then you're being inconsistent. All of the above have adherents and regular meetings. None of them has as its raison d'être the worship of a supernatural entity. None of them are exclusivist -- A '57 Chevy fan can own a motorcycle, a bike or even a Ford F150 without receiving anonymous death threats or pity-prayers from other members of the club; a knitter can also crochet or do woodworking; a Star Trek fan can watch Harry Potter movies; and a Pilates practitioner can go to yoga or t'ai chi classes or Big Fat Sweaty Iron Muscle Gym without fear of ostracism or of being fired by a Pilates-practicing supervisor at work.

In fact, a Humanist who attends church with his grandmother, goes to a Wiccan solstice ceremony with a friend or participates in an aboriginal drumming group is generally not going to be publicly humiliated at a meeting or tossed out of the group. Try standing up in your church and telling them that you spent Saturday evening at a Norse blót and drank a toast to Thor, and be prepared for a harsh reaction. Humanists are more likely to say "Hey, kewl!" "What does mead taste like?" "Y'know, the Nine Noble Virtues sound pretty okay. We should invite them to our next meeting to talk about what they do."

So no, Humanism is not a religion... Unless your definition of 'religion' is so wide and vague as to make the word meaningless. We have more in common with a political party, or with a volunteer service association such as the Lions Club or Rotary Club, than with a church.

I always stop reading the moment people start making assumptions about my background. None of my family attended church. Did we say prayers at Christmas dinner when family came? Yes.

Do you also always ignore the words people use when attempting to converse with you? It seems so. I said grew up with (aka - the Judeo Christian society). Did I say family? NO. Perhaps next time you should ask for clarification instead of just assuming.

I never had any prayers answered until after I was a believer, if that's what you mean.

WTF? I asked you to provide the details of this alleged "investigation" you claimed you did "for many years" before becoming a believer of Christianity. What studies did you do? What information did you find that lead you to believe the supernatural claims of the bible? As another person put it...citation please.

I'll bet he didn't actually investigate anything before he became a Christian. By that, I mean what most people consider the definition of investigate, "to observe and study by close examination and systematic inquiry". I won't venture to guess what he actually did do, but I strongly doubt anyone else would call it an investigation.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.